Phrost
4/13/2009 10:25am,
Strikeforce's show this past Saturday featured two highly anticipated fights; Chris "Cyborg" Santos vs. Hitomi Akano, and Nick Diaz vs. Frank Shamrock.
In a nutshell, both turned out to be mismatches.
Cyborg showed up significantly overweight to meet a game, but out-muscled Akano. Akano fought valiantly against her opponent who, as some have surmised, went into the fight with as much as a twenty-five pound weight advantage. At one point the fighter, demonstrating the familiar Japanese spirit of resiliance, seemingly attempted to catch a flying armbar on an incoming punch.
In the end, though her heart would have likely kept her in the fight, the referee wouldn't, stopping it just past 30 seconds in the third round.
In another fight which involved an odd weight difference, Nick Diaz met Frank Shamrock at a catch weight of 179 lbs. Diaz, noticably a bit chubbier than usual, effectively toyed with Shamrock and even managed to trash talk him during the fight.
The deciding factor seemed to be Diaz' extraordinary reach and confusing striking style, for which Shamrock had no real answer. The fight was stopped at 3:57 in the second round, but possibly could have been finished a lot sooner by Diaz should he have chosen to do so.
Our fight of the night would go to Scott Smith vs. Benji Radach. Radach's striking looked a lot crisper and more accurate than Smith, who's noted for his seemingly out-of-nowhere KO victory over Pete Sell after being felled himself by a punch. History repeated itself as at many points Radach demonstrated excellent punching technique, but was abruptly stopped with a KO at 3:24 in the third round by the Californian fighter.
In a nutshell, both turned out to be mismatches.
Cyborg showed up significantly overweight to meet a game, but out-muscled Akano. Akano fought valiantly against her opponent who, as some have surmised, went into the fight with as much as a twenty-five pound weight advantage. At one point the fighter, demonstrating the familiar Japanese spirit of resiliance, seemingly attempted to catch a flying armbar on an incoming punch.
In the end, though her heart would have likely kept her in the fight, the referee wouldn't, stopping it just past 30 seconds in the third round.
In another fight which involved an odd weight difference, Nick Diaz met Frank Shamrock at a catch weight of 179 lbs. Diaz, noticably a bit chubbier than usual, effectively toyed with Shamrock and even managed to trash talk him during the fight.
The deciding factor seemed to be Diaz' extraordinary reach and confusing striking style, for which Shamrock had no real answer. The fight was stopped at 3:57 in the second round, but possibly could have been finished a lot sooner by Diaz should he have chosen to do so.
Our fight of the night would go to Scott Smith vs. Benji Radach. Radach's striking looked a lot crisper and more accurate than Smith, who's noted for his seemingly out-of-nowhere KO victory over Pete Sell after being felled himself by a punch. History repeated itself as at many points Radach demonstrated excellent punching technique, but was abruptly stopped with a KO at 3:24 in the third round by the Californian fighter.